The winner of last year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year award has been disqualified after judges ruled that the featured wolf was likely a “model”.

The winning image, dubbed the storybook wolf, was taken by photographer Jose Luis Rodriguez.

Mr Rodriguez strongly denied that the wolf was a trained model, according to a statement from the organisers.

His photograph was chosen out of more than 43,000 competition entries in October 2009.

Louise Emerson from the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition office explained that the judging panel had been “reconvened” and had concluded that it was likely that the wolf featured in the image was an animal model that could be “hired for photographic purposes”.

This, she said, was in breach of the competition rules which are made available to all entrants.

“The judging panel looked at a range of evidence and took specialist advice from panel judges who have extensive experience of photographing wildlife including wolves,” continued Ms Emerson.

“They also considered the responses to specific questions put to the photographer.”

The annual competition is owned by the Natural History Museum in London and BBC Wildlife Magazine.

There always seems to be one bad egg, it’s really quite sad because the photo itself is fantastic, but the circumstances around it are less so.